


Rewind

by stardust_made



Series: The Christmas Series [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Christmas, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:24:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt, "What <i>does</i> Mrs. Hudson think of Lestrade?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewind

  
The first time she met Detective Inspector Lestrade was when she opened the door for him on the night of that drugs bust—the day Sherlock brought John home. She had a vague sense of recognition when she saw the inspector’s face but later she concluded it was because she had seen his picture in the newspaper. At the time she hadn’t been given a moment to wonder _why_ he looked familiar, what with his authority and his whooshing past her, going right up those stairs, taking them two at a time. And all the people following him up, their steps thumping and making the pictures on the walls shake. She’d been beside herself! She would have gone for the soothers straightaway if she hadn’t thought that might be…inappropriate when the police were ransacking the flat right above her head. She _was_ quite proud that she hadn’t for a moment regretted taking Sherlock in. For all his queer ways he was a good boy; she’d always known that.

The next few times she met the inspector—she still couldn’t bring herself to call him Lestrade, no matter how familiar he seemed—she found herself quickly getting used to him. It wasn’t hard. He was quite distinguished, actually, never mind that he wore all that awful dark blue and gray. She’d been tempted to advise him about his clothes, maybe even suggest a little splash of colour—like a rich brick red to go with something black, or a nice silver tie! Oh, she liked a man with a nice tie. There was a moment that was almost opportune, too, when they’d been talking about poor Connie Prince. What a shame she had to die so young. Well, maybe not _that_ young—you couldn’t really tell these days.

Anyway, she was able to see he didn’t really spend much time thinking about his appearance; there wasn’t a woman’s touch about him. She was no Sherlock, but she had her little ways of seeing things. The inspector deserved someone to tell him a thing or two about dressing. He was a nice man. She’d made him a cup of tea once or twice and got some Bourbons for him, after she saw him eating all the Bourbons from a mixed plate of biscuits. When she spoke he didn’t patronize her. She didn’t know much about police regulations, but she was sure not just any officer would let her listen in on all those interesting cases. Although it _was_ her house.

She hadn’t told him anything about his colouring. It wasn’t such an opportune moment after all. There was some poor person out there—with explosives on him, if you please!—waiting for Connie Prince’s murder to be solved. (At the time she’d been trying to get her head around how those two things were connected.) It was silly to twitter about ways to make the inspector look more handsome.

She hadn’t really given her strange sense of recognition a second thought—she regarded it as part and parcel of seeing him often. If Margaret hadn’t finally decided to part with her old video player, no one would have known.

It was actually a recorder, and it was old. She remembered their mum and dad buying it when they’d won a fair bit of cash on Bingo, and video recorders were still costly at the time. But her dad had wanted to watch his WWII films at his leisure and he used to have a knack for electronics and gadgets, dear old dad. “He’s constantly fiddling with all the buttons and tapes,” their mum used to say. “Keeps him quiet for hours.” Margaret certainly took after him—she’d kept the VCR for sentimental reasons, not because she didn’t have a DVD player.

It was Peter, apparently, who’d mentioned that VHS cassettes needed to be played once in a while, or at least put on forward and on rewind, otherwise something bad happened to the tape inside. One thing led to another and on Christmas day Margaret opened a present from her eldest to find a fancy new DVD thingamabob that could converse—or was it a convertible? Well, you could put onto a disc what you had recorded on the tapes, and then watch the discs on a computer or the DVD player. Peter said it was safer to keep things on discs anyway. Margaret immediately got all her old tapes out and began sorting through them.

So here they were on Boxing Day, just the two of them, having some sandwiches and tea in the afternoon, when the conversation turned to Margaret’s new toy. They both looked through some of the tapes in the boxes. There were films from the early nineties, some episodes of old series. And oh, some of dad’s history programmes that he had recorded twice, just in case. Reminiscences about their parents followed—not long stories or memories of big events, but more about what mum used to say each year when she made the Christmas pudding, or what dad used to keep in his garden trouser pockets.

And that was how they got around to watching Dad’s interview for that gardening programme. They hadn’t seen it for at least five years. Margaret put the tape on and did some rewinding and forwarding like Peter had said—it was a treasured memory of their dad and they would both have been devastated if the cassette broke. Margaret set the new DVD to record from the tape, then thought for a moment and said, “I think I’m going to have all of it, you know. Not just dad’s bits of the show.”

She could understand why her sister wanted to do that. At the time they’d recorded the entire programme off the TV, adverts and all, afraid to fiddle with the VCR, do something wrong and miss the show. They’d sat down watching it as it aired, the four of them, excited—and on dad’s part very embarrassed—and then they’d played the tape, relieved it was all there, just fine.

Then only three years later both mum and dad were gone, within two weeks of each other. She and Margaret didn’t watch the tape for quite some time, but then one Christmas they did play it again. Since then they watched it every once in a while, and always all of it.

This time they settled in and Margaret pressed play. Both were ready to point and giggle at people’s dated glasses and hair-dos—this was twenty years ago. She realized she probably still remembered some bits quite well, especially dad’s bit where he talked about the gardenias. Watching it all with Margaret again would be nice. Something familiar—

Familiar. She stared at the screen, not sure if her glasses were playing tricks on her. It couldn’t be—But he did look—Oh, yes, it _had_ to be—

“Oh!” she heard herself squeal as she tried to put her cup in its saucer and missed it by an inch. The china clattered loudly and Margaret looked at her, startled.

But she ignored her sister and waved her hand at the TV. “Rewind it, rewind it!” she said, breathless and once again excited at what she was seeing, but this time for very different reasons.

She heard the smile in Margaret’s voice. “You want to see sexy smoking boy again, don’t you? I’d forgotten all about him.” Margaret let out an exaggerated tut—the little tease—but started rewinding the tape anyway.

“Sexy smoking boy” was a young man from an advert for nicotine patches. There were two adverts and then the gardening programme commenced. The first advert was for some fabric softener and then it was the one with sexy smoking boy. It was filmed in the style of _Grease_ : boys on motorbikes, wearing leather jackets and whistling at girls. Sexy smoking boy was their leader and was first shown winking at a very pretty girl and licking his lips. (At the end she was disgusted with his smoking and walked away from him, the silly girl.) He looked just wicked, and he had buckets of the stuff that made you go all flushed and _ohhh_. She remembered giggling and arguing with Margaret that she wasn’t the one insisting on rewinding the tape to the bit of him blowing smoke out. Oh, he looked quite the thing there! No wonder she’d never seen the advert again anywhere else—he was selling the blooming _cigarettes_ instead of the patches.

She was the one to name him “sexy smoking boy”, although it was Margaret who had pointed out—Gosh, it was all coming back to her now, she was feeling dizzy!—that he was definitely of age. But when you were closer to fifty than to forty, a man in his twenties was a boy to you. In this case a smoking boy, with brick red stripes on his black leather jacket. He had spiky hair and big, dark, daring eyes—and goodness, but his tongue did things that just weren’t decent. He _was_ a sexy boy.

He was also Detective Inspector Lestrade and she didn’t even have to ask her sister to rewind again to know it—although of course she asked her anyway.

“What’s got into you?” Margaret said, laughing. She had to think quickly. Could she? It was her sister. Oh, she would _die_ if she didn’t tell—

No, it wasn’t right.

“Oh, just getting nostalgic, is all,” she replied. “You’ll make me a copy, won’t you?”

“’Course,” Margaret said, looking oblivious. She reached to a box of CDs and shook it, then nodded in satisfaction when she heard the rattle from inside. “I’ll do it right after this one.”

Oh, good. She’d quite like to watch that in peace and quiet, she would.

And she would definitely say something about his colouring the next time she saw him.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by the fantastic [](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/profile)[**disastrolabe**](http://disastrolabe.livejournal.com/). Written for red_chapel. Original entry [over here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/40558.html) at my Livejournal.


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